After several years' absence, Gay and Lesbian Humanist magazine has resumed publication, in an online version.

The Happy Human symbol was chosen in a competition organized by IHEU member organization the British Humanist Association in 1965. It was designed by Dennis Barrington. Since then, it (or one of many variations) has been widely adopted by Humanist organizations, including IHEU.

Reuters reports that the United Nations Committee against Torture has told the United States that secret jails for foreign terrorism suspects, as well as the Guantanamo Bay prison, are illegal and should be closed.

IHEU publishes a quarterly magazine in English: "International Humanist News" (IHN). The first issue of the annual French version, called Informations Humanistes Internationales, will be available at the end of March 2006. The objective is to provide francophone readers with a selection of articles that have been published in IHN.

The publication of 12 cartoons depicting the prophet Mohammed by the Danish newspaper Jyllands Posten last October and their republication by the Norwegian daily Dagbladet last week, has been met by a chorus of indignation from the Muslim world, a boycott of Danish goods throughout the Middle East, demonstrations in cities throughout the region, the withdrawal of ambassadors from Copenhagen by Saudi Arabia and Libya, and the occupation by armed men of the offices of the European Union in Gaza.

The cartoons were undoubtedly tasteless, and in fact pointless if the intention was not to provoke a reaction. But cartoons that convey a message far more critical of Islam appear daily in the Western press. The offence committed by the Danes was not that the cartoons ridiculed or insulted Islam, but that they depicted the figure of the Prophet. The reaction to the cartoons was not entirely unexpected, even by the cartoonists themselves. Over-reaction is now the norm in Islamic society. IHEU and other NGOs have seen for ourselves something of this tendency at the UN Human Rights Commission.